Methodology Used To Calculate The Median Price Of Dental Services In 300 US cities

Generally prices are calculated using the formula:

(price in a city)=(us average price)*(dental inflation factor)*(dental geographic multiplier)

The US average prices come from Brown and Lazar's, survey of the costs of certain dental services from 1975 to 1995 published in J Am Dent Assoc 1998 Sep;129(9):1291-5. The American Dental Association (ADA) does an annual survey on the price of most common dental survices. The ADA survey is the primary data for the dental costs page.

Unfortunately, because of publication delays, the ADA survey is usually one to two years out of date. Therefore, we need to adjust the data for inflation. Fortunately, the US Bureau of labor statistics does a monthly survey of the dental prices in the US. We use their data to calculate the inflation factor.

The ADA study is not broken down by city. However, ACCRA (American Chamber of Commerce Researchers Association) surveys their members quarterly, and produces a quarterly report of prices in 297 cities. The report includes the price of some key dental services in the cities. We use the ACCRA data to calculate the dental geographic multiplier.

The ACCRA data does not include many California cities and so in california we used US bureau of labor statistics data on the relative costs of professional services (medical, dental, ocular services) in the cities to calculate the geographic multipliers.

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